Tuerk Falters On Allentown Violence

Mayor Tuerk attributed our violent weekend to the number of guns in our community. That would be news to the State Trooper who was stabbed over the weekend in Berks County. Of course the problem isn't guns and knives, rather the denizens who use them.

There isn't an easy solution to the denizen problem.  Pandering politicians, society and pop culture glorify that life.  However, Allentown doesn't have to be so hospitable to the perpetrators. When the police see a car double parked, take the opportunity to check out the driver...in the least he/she is blocking traffic.

I understand that people are hurting from the violence, and that the rally at Promise Neighborhoods was an opportunity to share that pain.

Allentown is a municipality with a mayor and police department. Resources directed to non-profits such as Promise Neighborhoods are actually defunding the police. While Promise received combined $millions from Washington, Harrisburg and Allentown, the Allentown police department remains understaffed.

Tuerk sees Promise Neighborhoods as a solution to our troubles.  WFMZ's report on the shootings ended telling us that Promise Neighborhoods went to the scene of all three shootings, to let the neighbors know that their resources are available.  

photocredit:Ryan Gaylor/LehighvalleyNews.com

Mayor Tuerk, Less Promise More Police

Mayor Tuerk, last time you had the displeasure of seeing me was at the Promise Neighborhood Allentown Budget Love Fest...That sure was a friendlier venue for you than city council!! Many years ago that building housed an apron supply business. They would supply my father's meat market, farther down on Union Street, with clean butcher coats and aprons every week. Talking about blood, I'm here to talk about the weekend shootings in the Ward and East Side.

Although I live farther west in Allentown, I spend a lot of time in the Ward.  I often see cars double parked on 2nd,  talking to one person after another, then moving on to the next block and repeating the conversations.  I see this week after week. I often wonder why the police don't see these things?

You need to start thinking less about appeasing Promise Neighborhoods and the politics involved with such distractions from real public safety. You need to direct Chief Roca to start cracking down on the lawlessness in front of our eyes. 

Frankly, you and Roca need to start doing a better job!

photo of cynical blogger in gray hair and black coat listening to Tuerk preach to the choir/Promise Neighborhood grant(s) recipient and voter block.

Jennings' Campaign to Free Ed Pawlowski

Alan Jennings,  former founder and long time head of Community Action of Lehigh Valley, has been actively campaigning to have Ed Pawlowski released early from his prison sentence.  On facebook one of Alan's friends writes:

The only thing Ed was guilty of was grandiosity and hubris, thinking an Allentown mayor could become governor? The campaign financing structure whereby you need to hit up millionaires or be a billionaire is also to blame! Politicians need to put their hat out for donations to a ridiculous degree.

Of course the above is nonsense. Pawlowski used every city contract as an opportunity to twist arms for campaign contributions.  Contracts were not given out based on price or value for the city, but rather donations to Pawlowski.  That is the corruption for which he is serving time.

Jennings marginalizes that reality in his campaign for Pawlowski. Jennings himself made a career of twisting arms to get funding for the sacred cow he operated. 

One person who knew Pawlowski well was Michael Adams, former long term tenant at the Log & Stone house in Lehigh Parkway. When Adams injected some truthful reality into Jennings' facebook post, Jennings resorted to an ad hominem attack. 

Apparently, Mike, you have crawled out of the dark hole into which you were heading when I stopped talking to you. Regarding Ed, you don’t know as much as you think you do about my role. And I’m not going to waste anymore time on you because you have chosen to  take pot shots at those trying to make a difference rather than contribute as you once did. Go back into your hole.

The problem with the Jennings and Pawlowskis of the world is that they're holier than thou, especially with other people's money.

Lehigh Valley Railroad Old Main Line

The last portions of the Old Main Line were recently removed from Jaindl's NIZ waterfront parcel. Save for this blogger, not a peep from anybody else in protest. On the contrary, the track removal was spun as a positive, with notions that it would become part of the rail to trail network.

Shown in the photo above, the Old Main crosses Hamilton Street. There was a siding for the large white warehouse on the far right side of the photo. The line had numerous sidings, serving companies both along the river and on Front Street. For A&B Meats, the siding went into the plant.

Just south of Union Street there was a freight terminal and small yard. Although the old iron trestle bridge still spans the Lehigh north of American Parkway, only little scattered sections of rail remain on the west side of the Lehigh River.

ADDENDUM: My pieces on local history are not taken from Wikipedia and other sources, but rather from my experiences growing up in Allentown.  My father's family operated a small meat packing operation on Union Street. Included in the parcel was a garage on Walnut Street, and the white warehouse shown above on Hamilton.  I spent many hours waiting for the trains to cross Union Street.

reprinted from February of 2020

DeSantis Unleashes Death Train On Trump Supporters

The Brightline private train line has killed 104 Trump supporters since its recent startup. Roaring through sleepy towns at 80 miles an hour, many elderly don't even hear the whistle before they become a roadkill pancake. 

In small towns like Palm Bay Florida, the laidback pedestrians were used to slow moving freight trains. All that changed with Brightline's plan to join Miami and Orlando with a speedy connection. While the line invested $millions in new tracks and bridges capable of handling the speed up to 130mph, the human factor got no attention. On the contrary, complaints about the loud whistles will only increase the carnage. 

Perhaps the next president could control the border problem with a Brightline Train instead of a wall.

The above post supplied by Rainy Morning Chronicle, a sister publication.

The Fountain Park Flood Wall

Last week I used this photo in regard to the water lease controversy. It shows the rear of the Allentown water plant on Martin Luther King Drive. Although I identified the railroad track as part of the former Barber Quarry Spur route, a mystery remained. The rail line itself was on the south side of the Little Lehigh Creek. It would past Schreibers Bridge, and end up past Union Terrace, behind the present day Hamilton Family Dinner. An inquiry to Mark Rabenold, local train historian, was in order. Wow... that's a rare photo, indeed! What you have there is the remnant of the siding that used to cross a short trestle/bridge over the Little Lehigh creek and once serviced the city's water works. You're right in that it came off the Barber branch. According to Dave R. Latshaw's article on the Barber branch in the 1988 Proceedings of the Lehigh County Historical Society.

"Initially coal was unloaded from hopper cars standing on a siding located along the south bank of Little Lehigh Creek and was carried across the creek by donkeys pulling two-wheel carts over a bridge built by Col. Harry C. Trexler directly behind the pump station. In later years a conveyor operated by electricity hauled coal from cars spotted on branch track to storage bins at the pump station. Circa 1910, the water department constructed a railroad bridge from the branch to the pump station. This bridge allowed the movement of coal in hopper cars directly to the boiler house....In August 1936, because flooding of Little Lehigh creek on occasion threatened the pump station and filtration plant, municipal authorities approved construction of a flood wall along the creek's north bank. In addition, a pit was built to allow dumping coal between the tracks and a conveyor then lifted coal from the pit to a coal pile on the east side of the boiler house." "Because only one car could be dumped at a time, the branch train pushed a car loaded with pea coal to the dump pit at least twice per week." "Railroad service to the water department ended in the 1946-1947 era."

The wall, which still protects Fountain Park from flooding, was another project of the WPA. 

reprinted from April of 2013